The Naval Pioneers of Australia eBook

CHAPTER IV. [Sidenote: 1779]

ARTHUR PHILLIP, FOUNDER AND FIRST GOVERNOR OF NEW
SOUTH WALES.

Captain Cook’s “discovery” of New
Holland was turned to no account until a generation
later, and to Sir Joseph Banks more than to any other
man belongs the credit of the suggestion. In
1779 a commission of the House of Commons was appointed
to inquire into the question of transportation, then,
in consequence of the loss of the American colonies,
an important problem needing a speedy solution.
At this period, indeed up to a much later time, the
English prison administration was notoriously bad.
The gaols were crowded and filthy, and there was no
discipline; no system governed them other than the
system of rascality practised by many of the gaolers.

Mr. Banks (as he then was) gave evidence before the
House of Commons, and strongly urged the establishment
of a penal colony at Botany Bay, giving his opinion,
of course, as the botanist who had accompanied Cook
and had seen what prospect there was of establishing
a settlement at New Holland. Banks from this
time till his death took a keen interest in the New
South Wales colonizing scheme, and had much influence
for good in the future of the colony. He was
a man of independent means, and there is not the slightest
reason nor the least evidence to the contrary, to doubt
his perfect disinterestedness in all that he did.
But when President of the Royal Society the caricaturists
and the satirists had little mercy on him, believing
him more courtier than scientist. Peter Pindar’s
Sir Joseph Banks and the Emperor of Morocco
is only one of the many satires of which Banks was
the principal victim.

The proposals of one Jean Maria Matra and of Admiral
Sir George Young for forming new colonies to take
the places of those lost to us in America, with the
evidence and subsequent advocacy of Banks, ultimately
led to the Government’s decision to colonize
New South Wales. But it was not until 1786 that
that decision was reached, and a year later still when
Captain Arthur Phillip was given a commission as captain
of the expedition and governor of the new colony.

All that is known of Phillip prior to his appointment
is contained in a semi—­official account
of the expedition called Phillip’s Voyage,
published about a hundred years ago. We are here
told that his father was a German teacher of languages
who settled in London, his mother the widow of Captain
Herbert, of the royal navy, and that young Phillip
was born in Bread Street, in the parish of All Hallows,
London.

It may be presumed that, by the influence of his mother’s
connections through her first marriage, he was sent
to Greenwich School, and thence into the navy, where
he began his career under Captain Michael Everett at
the outbreak of war in 1755.